BPM Summary
1 Introduction to Business Process Management
Business Process Management (BPM) is the art and science of overseeing how work is performed in an
organization to ensure consistent outcomes and to take advantage of improvement opportunities.
Process examples:
Order-to-cash: customer submits an order -> a product/service is delivered
Quote-to-order: supplier receives RFQ -> customer places purchase order
Procure-to-pay: organization needs product/service -> product/service delivered
Issue-to-resolution: customer raises problem/complaint -> resolved issue
Application-to-approval: someone applies for benefit/privilege -> granted or denied
A business process encompasses a number of events and activities. Events correspond to things that
happen atomically, meaning that they have no duration. An event may trigger the execution of series of
activities. Activities that are rather simple and can be seen as one single unit of work, are called a task. In
addition to activities and events, a typical process involves decision points, that is, points in time when a
decision is made that affects the way the process is executed. A process also involves a number of actors
and physical objects. Finally, the execution of a process leads to one or several outcomes. Among the actors
involved in a process, the one who consumes the output of the process is considered a customer.
A business process is defined as a collection of inter-related events, activities and decision points that
involve a number of actors and objects,
and that collectively lead to an outcome
that is of value to at least one customer.
BPM is defined as a body of methods,
techniques and tools to discover, analyze,
redesign, execute and monitor business
processes.
The key idea of BPM is to focus on
processes when organizing and managing
work in an organization.
The BPM Lifecycle:
Process identification: in this
phase, a business problem is
posed, processes relevant to the
problem that are worthwhile and
feasible to manage are identified,
delimited and related to each other. The outcome of process identification is a new or updated
process architecture providing a total view of processes in organizations and their relationships.
Process discovery (also called as-is process modeling): here, the current state of each of the
relevant processes is documented, typically in the form of one or several as-is process models.
1 Introduction to Business Process Management
Business Process Management (BPM) is the art and science of overseeing how work is performed in an
organization to ensure consistent outcomes and to take advantage of improvement opportunities.
Process examples:
Order-to-cash: customer submits an order -> a product/service is delivered
Quote-to-order: supplier receives RFQ -> customer places purchase order
Procure-to-pay: organization needs product/service -> product/service delivered
Issue-to-resolution: customer raises problem/complaint -> resolved issue
Application-to-approval: someone applies for benefit/privilege -> granted or denied
A business process encompasses a number of events and activities. Events correspond to things that
happen atomically, meaning that they have no duration. An event may trigger the execution of series of
activities. Activities that are rather simple and can be seen as one single unit of work, are called a task. In
addition to activities and events, a typical process involves decision points, that is, points in time when a
decision is made that affects the way the process is executed. A process also involves a number of actors
and physical objects. Finally, the execution of a process leads to one or several outcomes. Among the actors
involved in a process, the one who consumes the output of the process is considered a customer.
A business process is defined as a collection of inter-related events, activities and decision points that
involve a number of actors and objects,
and that collectively lead to an outcome
that is of value to at least one customer.
BPM is defined as a body of methods,
techniques and tools to discover, analyze,
redesign, execute and monitor business
processes.
The key idea of BPM is to focus on
processes when organizing and managing
work in an organization.
The BPM Lifecycle:
Process identification: in this
phase, a business problem is
posed, processes relevant to the
problem that are worthwhile and
feasible to manage are identified,
delimited and related to each other. The outcome of process identification is a new or updated
process architecture providing a total view of processes in organizations and their relationships.
Process discovery (also called as-is process modeling): here, the current state of each of the
relevant processes is documented, typically in the form of one or several as-is process models.
